Monday, August 30, 2010

JENIN, (PIC)-- The Israeli prisons authority (IPA) is fully denying more than 40% of the Jenin prison population the right to family visits against 30% who are denied partial visits, the Palestinian Prisoner Society reported.

Director of PPS in Jenin, Ragheb Abu Diak said in a press statement Monday that banning family visits from prisoners is a serious violation of human rights principles and the Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees the right to regular visits as stipulated in laws, regulations, and international conventions.

In his statement, Abu Diak called on the Red Cross to move quickly to monitor arbitrary measures the IPA has been taking against prisoners, particularly the humiliating searches at the Jalama gate when going to visit their children.

To add to their suffering, prisoners are forced to purchase their basic needs, like clothes, shoes, and blankets, from the prison’s canteen at high prices, since the lack of visits has led to a shortage in those items.

All families of prisoners from the Gaza Strip have been fully denied seeing their children for four consecutive years.

Srinagar, Aug 29: Torture of youth by police and paramilitary CRPF (central reserve police force) is proving deadly in the current unrest in Kashmir. Among the 64 victims of past 79 days, five persons have lost their lives due to alleged custodial torture and thrashing by the forces, the youngest victim being the 9-year old Sameer of Batamaloo.

The latest victim of fatal torture is 17-year old Omar Qayoom Bhat, who succumbed to his injuries on past Wednesday. Omar was allegedly tortured in police custody. Doctors told Greater Kashmir that his lungs were severely damaged due to blunt trauma. “The trauma caused intrapulmonary hemorrhage and we put him on ventilator but couldn’t save his life,” they said.

The first victim, Rafiq Ahmed Bangroo, was severely beaten by CRPF troopers in June. After battling for life for a week, Bangroo breathed his last at SKIMS. He had received multiple injuries in head and other body parts.

Seventeen-year old Muzaffer Ahmed Bhat of Gangbugh Batamaloo was beaten to death by CRPF troopers and his body disposed of in a stream on July 5, locals say. Medicos, who performed his autopsy, revealed that he had two injury marks in the head.

The youngest victim, 9-year old Sameer Ahmed Rah was beaten to death by paramilitary troopers when he left for his cousin’s home to play carom.

Another victim, Syed Farakh Bukhari, was allegedly killed in police custody after being arrested at Choora Sangrama on July 28 for participating in protests. His body was recovered a fortnight later with multiple torture marks. Scores of youth have also been wounded due to custodial torture across the valley in past over two months.

“I was beaten for two hours in police lock-up after being picked up on charges of stone-pelting and was only left after blood started oozing out of my mouth,” said Nazir Ahmed (name changed) of old city.

Medicos who treated trauma patients in city hospitals said that they have come across shocking cases of torture. “We have seen many cases where vital parts of the body have been damaged without firearm injuries. A slight use of force on some parts of body can prove fatal,” said a SKIMS medico. Experts say that use of lethal physical force has put the debate beyond use of lethal and non-lethal weapons for crowd control in the valley.

“Everybody would blame lethal weapons for civilian causalities, but these deaths have not taken place by firearm injuries,” experts said, adding that there is dire need of humane approach while dealing with detained stone-pelters and protesters. The human rights activists and lawyers in the valley term torture as most cruel form of force, saying that this issue needs more attention.

“More than 5 lakh (500,000!!) persons have been subjected to physical torture in past 20 years of conflict.

The issue has not been highlighted like mass graves and disappearances. It is for the first time in present agitation that these deaths are getting noticed,” says human rights lawyer and Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society president, Parvez Imroz. “Before this, victims would die silently after being subjected to physical torture by forces. We have started documenting torture cases in valley and it is bigger issue and needs international attention,” he said.

Human rights lawyer Mir Shafqat Hussain told Greater Kashmir that police has to follow guidelines given by Supreme Court in B.K. Basu versus state of West Bengal case in detention cases. “They are flouting these guidelines. They have to produce detainee before magistrate and inform parents. He should be shifted to hospital within 48 hours for medical examination by an expert doctor as per this judgment,” he said. “They cannot torture detainee under custody.” *sigh*

Sunday, August 29, 2010

A month after torrential monsoon rains triggered Pakistan's worst natural disaster on record, flood waters are starting to recede -- but leaving countless survivors at risk of death from hunger and disease.

The disaster has killed at least 1,643 people, forced more than six million from their homes, inflicted billions of dollars of damage to infrastructure and the vital agriculture sector and stirred anger against the U.S.-backed government which has struggled to cope.

The floods began in late July after torrential monsoon downpours over the upper Indus basin in northwest Pakistan.

Weather officials said water levels were receding on most rivers and they expected no rain in the coming few days.

"We believe that it will take another 10 to 12 days for rivers in Sindh to come to normal flow. Therefore, we still need to be watchful," said Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the government's top weather official.

The death toll was expected to rise significantly as the bodies of the many missing people are found.

The United Nations said aid workers were increasingly worried about disease and hunger -- especially among children -- in areas where even before the disaster acute malnutrition was high.

U.N. officials say an estimated 72,000 children, affected by severe malnutrition in flood-affected areas, are at high risk of death.

Even before the floods, Pakistan's economy was fragile. Growth, forecast at 4.5 percent this fiscal year, is now predicted at anything between zero and 3 percent.

The floods have damaged at least 3.2 million hectares (7.9 million acres) -- about 14 percent of Pakistan's cultivated land -- according to the United Nation food agency.

The total cost in crop damages is believed to be about 245 billion rupees ($2.86 billion).

Shas spiritual leader 6abbi Ovadia Yosef denounced upcoming peace talks with the Palestinians, which are set to start September 2 in Washington, and called for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to "perish from this world," Army Radio reported overnight Saturday.

"Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this world," Rabbi Ovadia was quoted as saying during his weekly sermon at a synagogue near his Jerusalem home. "God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians."

The Shas spiritual leader also called the Palestinians "evil, bitter enemies of Israel" during his speech, which is not the rabbi's first sermon to spark controversy.

In 2001, the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox faction gave a speech in which he also called for Arabs' annihilation.

"It is forbidden to be merciful to them," he was quoted as saying. "You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable."

The Palestinian Authority had condemned the speech as racist and inciteful.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, also from Shas, earlier this week also remarked on the forthcoming peace talks with the Palestinians, saying that Shas would oppose extending the West Bank settlement building freeze due to expire in late September.

Yishai has suggested that Israel would continue construction in the main settlement blocs likely to remain part of Israel in the framework of a peace deal, but freeze construction in outposts or more remote settlements.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Security forces loyal to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) on Friday stormed the southern West Bank town of Dura, assaulting civilians and laying siege to two large Mosques.

The forces, which were riding brand-new vehicles "donated" by the United States, and carrying the official trademark of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) prevented people from accessing the Grand Mosque in town Center, before storming the mosque in order to prevent Sheikh Nayef Rajoub, a popular Islamic leader, from giving the traditional pre-sermon dars or homily.

Rajoub, a former Minister of Wakf and Islamic Affairs, is one of the most popular Islamic leaders in the West Bank. His popularity however, has been a source of anxiety to the Fatah-controlled government whose Wakf Minister, Muhammed al Habbash, last week issued an order barring Rajoub from preaching or giving Islamic lectures at the Mosques.

Rajoub rejected the order, calling it "incompatible with Islam."

According to eyewitnesses, the troops behaved provocatively, offending Muslim sensibilities. They entered the mosque with their boots on, which is considered offensive and nearly sacrilegious throughout the Muslim world.

Seeking to avert a more violent showdown, Rajoub moved to another mosque, the Mosque of al Mujahed, where he started preaching about the virtues of the Holy Month of Ramadan.

However, hundreds of PA troops, including many in plain-clothes, pursued the Sheikh to the Mujahed Mosque, causing a commotion.

Once again, the troops desecrated the mosque by entering it with their boots-on. Another potentially violent showdown between the troops and the angry worshipers was narrowly averted when some local dignitaries convinced the Sheikh to stop preaching.

The storming of the town of Dura and assault on the mosques has infuriated local citizens who called PA troops "servants of Israel" and "Dayton soldiers."

"Even the Israeli soldiers wouldn’t behave like this. What happened today proves that the PA and Israel are two sides of the same coin," said Adib Sharah, a student.

One worshiper called the troops "Israeli collaborators who beat and persecute their own people on Israel's behalf."

Following the end of the congregational prayers, the PA security forces carried out a widespread campaign of arrest in the town and surrounding areas.

Local sources put the number of detainees at 40-50 people, mostly young Islamist activists who shielded Rajoub from attacks by the troops.

Speaking to the PIC Friday night, Rajoub lambasted the PA behavior as an "expression of moral and political bankruptcy."

"Instead of fighting the Israeli occupation and enabling Muslims to access the Aqsa Mosque, the PA is storming and desecrating mosques here in this town. And they are doing this to obtain a certificate of good conduct from the enemy."

He argued that no force on earth could prevent a Muslim scholar from communicating and preaching the message of Islam.

Rajoub, who has a Master Degree in Sharia, said the PA minister of Wakf, al Habbash, had no right to bar Ulema or Muslim scholars from carrying out their basic function.

During the 2006 elections, Rajoub received more votes than any other candidate in the Hebron District.

However, due to his popularity, the Israeli occupation authority targeted him with harsh persecution, throwing him in jail for nearly 50 months on concocted charges, such as supporting a militant organization.

He was released from Israeli detention only two months ago

Rajoub is still very popular which worries the PA which is trying to restrict his activities.

The latest events in Dura come amid accusations by Palestinian Islamic leaders that the PA is effectively fighting Islam in order to please Israel and the United States.

Some Palestinian and Arab experts are convinced that American and Israeli satisfaction with the PA depends largely on the extent to which the PA is willing to impose restrictions on Islamic activism in occupied Palestine.

On Wednesday, PA security forces violently thwarted a meeting in Ramallah organized by liberal and leftist intellectuals who were planning to hold a press conference to declare their opposition to what they view as a capitulation by the Ramallah leadership to American and Israeli dictates.

The violent repression of dissent, which has been stepped up in recent days and weeks, is being viewed as a bad omen by most Palestinians.

Palestinians are worried that the PA might resort to harsh tactics to impose an unpopular "peace deal" with Israel that would effectively liquidate the Palestinian cause by selling out or sacrificing such paramount Palestinian rights as Jerusalem and the right of return for million of Palestinian refugees uprooted from their homes and villages in what is now Israel.

GAZA- Hamas lawmaker Hatem Kufaisheh said Friday that the Palestinian Authority (PA) issued a decision preventing 17 lawmakers, who are also noted religious figures, from giving speeches or Friday Khutbas (sermons) in West Bank mosques.

Kufaisheh underlined that this campaign against mosques and religious figures is being carried out according to a carefully-prepared plan targeting the religion of Islam and its followers in Palestine.

He affirmed that the PA prevented this Friday lawmakers Nayef Al-Rajoub and Mohamed Abu Jehaisha from delivering speeches in Al-Khalil and sent unruly elements to harass them, adding that it also closed a mosque and prevented worshipers from performing their Friday prayers inside it.

Many eyewitnesses told the Palestinian information center (PIC) that the PA's security militias also stormed on the same day other mosques in Al-Khalil city in order to prevent the Muslim figures affiliated with Hamas from giving Friday sermons

August 19 - A ring engaged in selling organs and black transplantology has been exposed in the Ukraine, according to law enforcement agencies. The group consisted of 12 Ukrainian surgeons, and was headed by an israeli citizen. Investigators said the group, which was in this business for 3 years, attracted people who are ready to sell their organs, from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Uzbekistan, and would perform the surgeries in Azerbaijan and Ecuador.

The network, which mostly sought kidneys, paid as much as $10,000 per organ to the victims. The recipents, mostly from israel, paid between $100,000 and $200,000 per transplant, of which $15,000 to $20,000 would go to the surgeons.

The bloody wake left by the Mavi Marmara after the May 31 Israeli commando raid has not deterred 50 female activists from trying to break the four-year-old siege of Gaza.

To hear Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak speak of their planned relief effort, one would think the very existence of Israel was at stake.

The women plan to set sail aboard the Saint Mariam, a Bolivian-flagged cargo ship named in honor of the Virgin Mary, a figure sacred to both Christians and Muslims. Although they intend to depart from Tripoli, Lebanon, the crew is not only composed of multi-faith Lebanese but foreign nationals as well, including a group of nuns from the United States. So as not to give Israel pretext to attack, Hezbollah deliberately did not sponsor the mission nor were any members allowed to participate.

Its cargo? Books, toys, medical instruments and supplies, and most importantly, anticancer medication.

The ship cannot sail directly from Tripoli to Gaza since Lebanon and Israel remain technically at war (and Israel controls Gaza’s territorial waters) and thus must pass through a third country first. The Mariam was scheduled to leave for Cyprus last Sunday but authorities in Nicosia, capitulating to Israeli pressure, prohibited use of its ports for vessels departing to Gaza. Without the green light from Cyprus, Lebanon’s Transport and Public Works Minister Ghazi Aridi was forced to cancel the voyage until another country with whom Lebanon enjoys maritime relations could be found. Negotiations with Greece are now under way.

Barak, however, was outraged at the very notion that Lebanon would even consider allowing the Mariam to sail, characterizing its mission as “… a provocation intended to aid a terror organization.”

He went on: “The ship that is preparing to sail from Lebanon has nothing to do with humanitarianism … If the ship insists on arriving, in opposition to the current blockade, Israel will be forced to stop it and bring it to the port of Ashdod.”

The Israeli delegation to the United Nations submitted a formal complaint to both the Secretary-General and the Security Council, indicating Israel reserves the right to use “all necessary measures” to prevent the Mariam—and the toys and medications it carries—from docking in Gaza.

No rational person believes the all-women crew presents a physical or armed threat to Israel, either by their persons or cargo.

So why is Israel so terrified of the Mariam?

It has nothing to do with the activists, Hezbollah or even Hamas. What it does involve is ensuring the continuation of collective punishment of Gazans, who continue to wither under a four-year material and economic embargo.

It is why innocuous items like wheelchairs, crutches, books, crayons, or even chemotherapy pose such a threat; any relief provided to Palestinians not under the direct jurisdiction of Israel jeopardizes its role as sole arbiter of deciding whether to enforce or relax punishment of civilians. Only the occupying power has this right.

Collective punishment is an illegal and heinous form of warfare, and Gaza’s Palestinians have suffered from it as retribution for overwhelmingly electing Hamas to govern in the January 2006 parliamentary elections.

If the Mariam is allowed to sail and Israel cannot find justification to stop the nuns, doctors, lawyers, journalists, human rights workers and a pop star aboard from landing—if they are permitted to break the siege—then the Gaza shore could soon become inundated with ships, vessels and relief flotillas from the world over. And the myth of Israel as invincible regional superpower would, yet again, be shattered.

This is why Israel is terrified of a ship full of women, and why they are being demonized.

Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator. He may be reached at: rbamiri@yahoo.com

Thursday, August 26, 2010

“I was not elected to keep silent or to sit at the table and clap” - Haneen Zoabi, Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset.

What is it like being a Palestinian in Israel?Israel did everything it could to make us forget our history: controlling education and the media, putting us in a ghetto, preventing us from having normal relations with the Arab world and visiting our families in Syria and Lebanon.

Are Arab members of parliament treated differently?Of course. The state treats all Jews and Palestinians differently. Israel doesn't recognise us as the owners of this homeland. The theory is that we have equal civil rights, but the practice is very far from this.

Do you endorse a two-state solution?The reality of Israel's actions shows us that it's unrealistic to have a real sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza with Jerusalem as the capital. The more realistic solution is one state with full national equality for both national groups.

Is the west right to refuse to engage with Hamas?No one can tell the Palestinian people whom to choose as a government. Hamas is not a terrorist organisation. I don't think that Hamas has a clear political vision, but regardless of whether I disagree [with it], the international community cannot mediate neutrally if it starts to label the organisations of the Palestinians as illegitimate.

Why did you join the Gaza aid flotilla?The natural question should be: "Why not?" I participated not just because I'm Palestinian, but because I believe in freedom, equality and justice. One and a half million people in the biggest prison in the world is not just an occupation, it is a humiliation.

Did you feel a duty to speak out?I was not elected in order to keep silent or to sit at the table and clap.

Were you surprised by the violent response?I wasn't surprised, but I didn't expect it to be so severe. This aggressive kind of reaction indicates a total breakdown of politics. They could not challenge our arguments politically, so they called us traitors and terrorists.

Do you have faith in the Israeli investigation into the flotilla raid?No, none at all. Those accused of committing war crimes cannot investigate themselves. Bin­yamin Netanyahu [the Israeli prime minister] has said that this committee will show that Israel is a victim and that there were no violations. So is he already stating the results?

You've had death threats. Are you afraid?Personally I am not afraid, but politically I am worried. After the vote in the Knesset when they stripped me of my parliamentary rights, two members - one from the coalition, one from the opposition - said: "Haneen, this is just the beginning, this is not the end - we don't want to see you in the Knesset." They mean not just Haneen, but everything I represent.

Will you be able to carry on working?We didn't expect an easy struggle. I chose to be involved in politics because I was born in a racist context. I will continue using all the democratic tools that are available. I ask Israel not to push us into undesirable activities.

Are you against the very idea of Israel?We do not want to throw Jews into the sea. We are not against Jews. We are against Israeli policies and the definition of Israel as a Jewish state.

How does the struggle in the Palestinian territories compare to your own in Israel?This is the difference - as citizens of Israel, we are utilising all the tools that we have, but those in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have given up resisting occupation.

What about the Palestinian Authority?The PA seems more focused on building a state than ending the occupation. It's irrational; you can't negotiate borders while Palestinians are under siege and Israel is expanding settlements.

What is your hope for Arab citizens in Israel?I have a vision of our rights as indigenous people. We didn't migrate to Israel; it is Israel that migrated to us.

You've been quoted as saying that it would be a good thing for Iran to have nuclear weapons.That is inaccurate. It cannot be that someone who is struggling against oppression is calling for nuclear weapons. But if the world doesn't prevent Israel from having nuclear weapons, why does it prevent others?

What would you like to forget?I think it is better not to forget. I want to learn from the mistakes and enjoy the positive memories, especially because I live in a context that is obsessed with making me forget.

Do you vote?Of course I vote. I am a political representative.

Are we all doomed?No. If you struggle for justice and human values, then this is enough reason to continue.

Defining Moments

1969 Born in Nazareth2001 Joins Balad (National Democratic Assembly), the Israeli Arab political party2003 Co-founds and heads I'lam, an NGO exposing Israeli media bias2009 Becomes first woman to be elected to parliament (Knesset) on an Arab party list2010 Participates in the Gaza aid flotilla in May. On 13 July, the Knesset votes by 34-16 to strip her of three privileges, including the right to hold a diplomatic passport

Several months ago, a religious school in the illegal Israeli settlement of Immanuel was criticized for segregating white Jewish students from non-white Jewish students in classes.

Ethiopian Jewish student - not allowed to study at new school (photo by Jewish Middlesex)

Originally, the school was fined for this policy of racial segregation, because the school was state funded. Now, the Israeli education ministry has agreed with the white parents' request to allow the school to continue with its racial discrimination under private funding.

There is no law preventing racial discrimination by private organizations, even schools, in Israel.

The Israeli court has interpreted these laws to also apply to illegal West bank settlements, like Immanuel, which are located in areas that are supposed to be under Palestinian control. The Palestinian Authority does not allow racial discrimination, but due to the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian Territories, it has no authority over the area in question.

74 white girls who have been studying in a building next to the school will now be allowed to study in whites-only classrooms that are privately funded, as their parents claim they do not want their girls to study in racially-mixed classrooms.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

TROY, New York — The Dogans were a quiet family little noticed by their neighbors here in upstate New York. Ahmet Dogan had come to the area from Turkey to study accounting at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

He was a serious student; the Dogans did little entertaining. But when their younger son, Furkan, was born in 1991, the family threw a party and a neighbor recalled a toast “to the first U.S. citizen in the family.”

Furkan Dogan would live just two years in Troy, returning to Turkey with his family in 1993. But he was proud of his American passport and dreamt of coming back after completing medical school. Five Israeli bullets — at least two of them to the head — ended that dream on May 31. Dogan was 19.

The young American, who had just completed high school with excellent grades in the central Turkish town of Kayseri, had seen an online advertisement for volunteers to deliver aid to Gaza. The ad, from a Turkish charity called the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or I.H.H, said the goal of the trip was to show that Israel’s “embargo/blockade can be legally broken.”

Little interested in politics, but with an aspiring doctor’s concern for Palestinian suffering, Dogan won a lottery to go.

How he was killed is disputed — as is just about everything concerning the Israeli naval takeover of the six-boat Gaza-bound flotilla — but his father suspects a video camera carried by his son may have provoked Israeli commandos.

O.K., enough said, that’s the start of the story you haven’t read about the short life of Furkan Dogan, an American killed by Israeli forces in international waters on the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara.

In truth I have not been to Troy but I do find the effacement of Dogan since his death almost two months ago at once offensive and instructive.

I have little doubt that if the American killed on those ships had been Hedy Epstein, a St. Louis-based Holocaust survivor, or Edward Peck, a former U.S. ambassador to Mauritania, we would have heard a lot more. We would have read the kind of tick-tock reconstructions that the deaths of Americans abroad in violent and disputed circumstances tend to provoke. (Epstein had planned to be aboard the flotilla and Peck was.)

I also have little doubt that if the incident had been different — say a 19-year-old American student called Michael Sandler killed by a Palestinian gunman in the West Bank when caught in a cross-fire between Palestinians and Israelis — we would have been deluged in stories about him.

But a chill descends when you have the combination of Israeli commandos doing the firing, an American with a foreign-sounding Muslim name, and the frenzied pre-emptive arguments of Israel and those among its U.S. supporters who will brook no criticism of the Jewish state.

This chill is a bad thing. Let’s do whatever it takes to find out how Dogan died — and the eight other victims. The Middle East requires more open debate and the dropping of taboos. It needs the leading institutions of American Jewry to encourage broad discussion rather than, as Peter Beinart put it in an important recent essay in The New York Review of Books, checking “their liberalism at Zionism’s door.”

Let’s face it, without the flotilla outcry that allowed the Obama administration to question Israel’s self-defeating suffocation of Gaza, Israel would still be imposing the blockade that handed Hamas control of whatever was left of the Gaza economy. Now that blockade has been eased.

As this suggests, Israel will, ostrich-like, push policies born of the security mantra way beyond their rationale, only changing course when its critical friends raise their voices. It’s time for the U.S. Jewish establishment to think again — and think openly — or risk losing the many younger Jews troubled by Israel’s course.

I hope every member of Congress read Beinart’s piece. I contacted the office of Congressman Paul Tonko, who represents the Troy area, to ask about Dogan. A spokesman, Beau Duffy, wrote saying that “There really isn’t much of a local connection here” and that Tonko had no comment. Hardly a surprise: Nobody in Congress has had anything to say about this American death.

I called the State Department, where an official said the U.S. ambassador in Turkey has offered the Dogan family assistance. (He also denied reports that the United States plans to designate I.H.H. a terrorist organization.)

Any further action, including a possible F.B.I. investigation of Dogan’s death, will hinge on the results of the inquiry being led by a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice and including two foreign observers. The Dogan family could also request F.B.I. action.

But it seems they have few illusions. Professor Dogan, who teaches at Kayseri University, told the Wall Street Journal’s Marc Champion (who wrote the best piece on Dogan) that he’s been wondering what the U.S. response would have been if his son had been a Christian living stateside. Having lived in America, he said, “I know what people do there when a cat gets stuck in a tree.”

It’s different, however, when an American Muslim male gets stuck in a hail of Israeli gunfire.

Emily Henochowicz lost an eye when she was hit by a tear gas cannister fired by Israeli troops at a pro-Palestinian protest.

As a student artist, Emily Henochowicz has always been fascinated by the way the brain processes visual signals to form images of the physical world around us. That has been a theme of her work at the prestigious New York art college, Cooper Union, which she joined three years ago.

In her first term she made a costume out of papier-mache for the inaugural freshman's parade that neatly expressed that fascination. It was meant to be a monster cyclops, but the way it came out it resembled a giant eyeball with her arms and legs sticking out of it.

For more than a year she has used a photograph of that eyeball as the icon of her art blog, thirsty pixels. It is all too ironic, she laughs now. The irony is that in May Henochowicz became – in her own words – a cyclops. She lost her left eye as she was demonstrating against Israeli government policy in the Palestinian occupied territories.

With her loss, she became yet another casualty of the ongoing Israeli occupation. But what makes Henochowicz's story singular was that her experiences were filtered through the lens, the eye, of an artist.

It was art that took her to the Middle East in the first place. She signed up to an animation course in Jerusalem that suited her passion for drawing.

Her choice of Jerusalem had little to do with the fact that she was the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, or that her father was born in Israel and that she herself was Jewish and an Israeli citizen. It had even less to do with any political beliefs she might have on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, though she had been disturbed by Israel's conduct in the Gaza war of 2008-9.

It was all about art. But a month after she arrived in Jerusalem, an Israeli friend and peace activist took her into Palestinian East Jerusalem. That day changed everything.

"It was a little bit shocking," she says, recalling the event in a Manhattan cafe. "Suddenly a huge group of Hassidim came down the street. These little Palestinian kids – just five or six years old – linked arms and were standing in the middle of the street. The Hassidim were on the other side, singing prayers at them. It was such a powerful image for me: that line of children, so strong and defiant, this huge group of adults in front of them."

The next day Henochowicz captured the moment in a dramatic painting that shows the children in front of a swirl of black-clad Jewish men. And then she acted on impulse – something that as an artist she says she is wont to do. She went to Ramallah on the West Bank and joined the protest campaign the International Solidarity Movement.

Over the next few weeks Henochowicz threw herself into the fray, protesting outside Israeli settlements in the West Bank and along the separation wall. She was aware of the dangers, not least because it was with the ISM that fellow-American Rachel Corrie had been demonstrating in 2003 when she was crushed to death by a bulldozer.

"I had a fear the whole time I was going to get hit with tear gas," Henochowicz says. "I knew the way that it was used. Forget UN regulations, this is Israel, the rules don't apply here – tear gas is fired directly into crowds."

At first she kept what she was doing from her parents, certain that they would disapprove. But eventually she told them.

"They were incredibly upset, particularly my dad. He had been to Yeshiva, Jewish school, and speaks Hebrew.' How could you do this to me?' he said, but I wasn't doing it to him."

Paradoxically, shortly before the incident in which she lost her eye, Henochowicz decided, partly out of concern for her parents, that she would avoid demonstrations and dedicate herself instead to teaching art to Palestinian children. But on the morning of 31 May she awoke to the news that a Turkish flotilla attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza had been raided and nine activists killed.

Mayhem and confusion ensued. She was swept along by the reaction, and found herself at a protest rally at the Qaladiya checkpoint, facing Israeli soldiers. "I was scared in a way I'd never been before."

It was so quick, maybe just a minute from the first stones being thrown to the tear gas canister striking her in the face.

"And then I remember falling back and being held, and cameras rushing to me and clicking away and me thinking 'Oh, I've become one of those images'."

She was treated in a hospital in Ramallah and Jerusalem before returning to Maryland in the US. She has had multiple operations for a fractured skull as well as losing the eye.

The Israeli government has refused to pay thousands of dollars in medical costs, on the grounds that Henochowicz chose to put herself at risk and that she was hit by mistake by a ricochet.

"That's preposterous," she says. "A ricochet? From what wall? Where? How? This was no ricochet."

Henochowicz is now preparing for term to start at Cooper Union. She wears a pair of glasses, the left lens of which she has painted with swirls to obscure the empty socket behind it.

She says she has adapted with amazing speed to the loss. "I go through a lot of my days not even thinking that I'm seeing only through one eye. I'm so fine in other ways, I'm perfectly healthy."

She stresses how unfair she thinks it is that she gets so much attention, while Palestinians who are injured with depressing frequency go without notice. "I'm white, I'm Jewish, I'm an Israeli citizen and American. When I'm hit by tear gas there are articles, the Israeli government gets involved. When Palestinians are hit, who gives a shit?"

She doesn't know what the longer-term impact will be on her art. She remembers telling the doctor who informed her she had lost an eye: "But I'm an artist, that's not supposed to happen!"

"I've been sad because this is a moment in my life I can never escape, and that's what gets me more than the loss of my eye," she says. "Twenty years from now I will still carry this moment, and I desperately don't want it to be the end of my story."

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

With 20 million or more people affected, about 12% of the population, the equivalent of 37 million Americans, Pakistan's devastating floods are truly of biblical proportions, described by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as worse than anything he'd ever seen, saying:

"Thousands of towns and villages have simply been washed away. Roads, buildings, bridges, crops - millions of livelihoods have been lost. People are marooned on tiny islands with the floodwaters all around them (without food, sanitation, medical help, or shelter). They are drinking dirty water. They are living in the mud and ruins of their lives. Many have lost family and friends. Many more are afraid their children and loved ones will not survive in these condition."

One fifth or more of Pakistan is under water, the US equivalent of Texas, California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, Florida, and Oregon combined, what's unimaginable in America and would never be tolerated without massive emergency aid.

Yet the Pakistani-based News reports that:

"Hundreds of thousands of people including children, women and aged men have been trapped on the rooftops of their houses as floodwaters with 5-feet depth has blanketed entire districts."

They won't survive without help. Deadly disease outbreaks are feared. Already, reports of cholera are surfacing, suggesting perhaps a much wider scale problem than verified.

Unknown numbers have perished, perhaps thousands, likely tens or hundreds of thousands before it's over. Yet aid so far donated has been pathetic, America providing token relief only, hardly enough to matter, Washington's usual response to great need, even emergencies, the way Haitian earthquake victims were treated, still on their own and out of luck eight months after their disaster.

Pakistan's government and world leaders have been disturbingly indifferent to the problem, doing far too little when massive amounts of emergency aid are urgently needed quickly.

Addressing the UN on August 19, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington would increase its donation to $150 million, $92 million to the UN, more for security than humanitarian efforts, Senator John Kerry (Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman) underscoring America's purpose on a visit to Shahbaz Airbase, saying:

"The objective is humanitarian, but obviously there is a national security interest. We do not want additional jihadis, extremists, coming out of a crisis."

Pakistan's Foreign Minister added:

"If we cannot deal with (the flood emergency) there are chances of food riots leading to violence being exploited by people who are known," a thinly veiled reference to "Islamist extremists."

On August 18, US Marine Commandant, General James T. Conway, met Pakistan's army Chief of Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in Rawalpindi to discuss security, not relief, Pakistan press reports saying "during the course of the meeting....they discussed issues pertaining to national security, war and terrorism, defense needs, etc. at length."

The plight of 20 million Pakistanis wasn't addressed, showing America's contempt for the needy, even under dire emergency circumstances, victims getting little or no aid, one man speaking for many, saying:

"We left our homes with nothing and now we're here with no clothes, no food and our children are living beside the road." So are millions of others, perhaps more than reported.

A Disturbing Asian Human Rights Commission Report

Issued on August 20, it's headlined, "PAKISTAN: Minister tasked with saving US airbase at the cost of the displacement of thousands," saying:

Reports say that "the US Air Force has denied the relief agencies use of the Shahbaz Airbase (it controls) for the distribution of aid and assistance. Soldiers of the Pakistan army, a federal minister and the administration of Sindh province are blamed for the incident involving Shahbaz Airbase at Jacobabad district" where flood waters were diverted to save the base.

As a result, 800,000 people were affected, displaced by floods, their homes lost, their condition desperate and worsening like for millions in affected areas.

Mr. Ejaz Jakhrani, Minister of Sports explained that "if the water was not diverted, the Shahbaz Airbase would have been inundated." He was assigned to protect it, former Prime Minister Mir Zafar Ullah Khan Jamali saying that doing it meant demolishing the Jamali bypass and letting the town of Dera Allahyar drown. He added that "if the airbase was so important, then what priority might be given to the citizens." He blamed "minister Jakhrani, DPO and DCO Jacobabad for deliberately diverting the course of the floodwaters toward Balochistan."

Other discussions confirmed that health relief operations aren't possible because America controls the base, and "there are no airstrips close to" affected areas, including Jacobabad.

Media reports said in 2001, the Musharraf government gave America control of Shahbaz to wage war on terrorism, the presence of army soldiers during the Jamali bypass breach a clear sign "that the Pakistan army (was) ordered to save the airbase." It meant flooding out hundreds of thousands of people, now stranded on their own without help.

"There can be no doubt that the presence of the Pakistan army personnel at (the Jamali bypass) indicates (that) this was an intentional breach," ordered by Americans in charge. "This must be investigated to ascertain who gave the orders. Those giving (them) must be prosecuted," condemning perhaps thousands of victims to death.

"It is a gross contradiction that the United States of America (donates aid, yet) refus(es) permission to use the Shahbaz airbase" to deliver it, the only facility able to do it for a large area affected.

Compare today's Pakistan to Haiti post-quake. America militarized the country, stressed security, took over the Port-au-Prince airport, obstructed relief supplies, sent in the Marines, and left millions of Haitians on their own, most getting little or no aid, nor are they now eight months later.

The same scenario affects Pakistani victims, America taking over, stressing security, and blocking aid, innocent people left stranded, perhaps to perish while imperial wars get limitless resources, powerful interests profiting at the expense of unwanted, deserted millions on their own and out of luck, the real face of US "democracy," in name only, not real.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Canadian activists looking to assist in the breaking of the siege of Gaza plans to launch a Canadian Boat to Gaza this fall. However, this Canadian version of the Freedom Flotilla that seeks to break the siege has a twist.

In partnership with the Free Gaza Movement (the group behind numerous boats to the Gaza Strip), the Canadian Boat to Gaza initiative, headed in part by Canadian activist Sandra Ruch, seeks to also take goods out of Gaza. In this way, the Canadian activists hope to assist Palestinians in Gaza by helping them, as declared in their mission statement, "assert their right to export, trade and provide for themselves rather than be at the mercy of international aid." It is often forgotten that the siege of Gaza, intensified after the Hamas elections victory in 2006, prohibits all exporting from the Strip. This is the other half of the siege, which helps to corrode the economic independence of the Palestinian people.

The launch of the project was made at the first fundraiser for the Canadian Boat to Gaza on 14 July 2010 at the Steel Workers Hall located in downtown Toronto. Having been to the Gaza Strip twice, Ruch has seen the effects of the suffocating blockade. "Every time that I went to Gaza," recalled Ruch, "the people told me, 'You know, we're not farm animals, we can't just be fed -- we need to be free.'" The organizers estimate the initiative will cost at least $300,000 CDN ($294,663 USD) and fundraising efforts are going on at the moment to reach that amount before the fall sailing season starts in mid-September of this year.

This theme of self-empowerment and self-reliance ran throughout the kickoff fundraiser, which also featured Israeli economist Shir Hever, who gave a presentation on the different types of aid that go into the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hever also discussed how Israel as the occupying power manipulates the management of this aid in ways that allow it to benefit politically and economically from the occupation. Hever detailed the ways in which international aid indirectly takes the heat off Israel's responsibilities (and crimes), and how the Canadian Boat to Gaza project can contribute to the solution of these problems (Hever's talk is available on Youtube).

Ultimately, the flotilla movement allows the humanitarian problem in Gaza to be tended to with dignity. While incorporating a mechanism by which the people of Gaza can profit on the ground from the humanitarian support, Hever also emphasized that the flotilla initiative itself is a "strong political message," forcing "the world to focus on the political and humanitarian disaster that is the Gaza blockade as well as the Palestinian question in general." By helping to carry Palestinian exports, the act brings to attention the Palestinian right to trade with the outside world (something that Israel, as the occupying power, is supposed to respect).

Hever's research puts aid to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in political context. During the years of the Oslo accords from around 1994 to 2000, the international community (especially the European Union) began to funnel more humanitarian and developmental aid to the occupied territories, amounting to approximately $7 billion USD (see "International Aid to the Palestinians Under Occupation," Alternative Information Center, 7 July 2010).

Instead of being makers of their own destiny, the Palestinians are forced into being passive consumers of mostly Israeli goods. The Palestinians in Gaza, who are not allowed any exports under the siege, and a very, very limited amount of imports from the United Nations (the amount of which fluctuates at the whim of Israeli officials), suffer most from these economic absurdities. All the while, Israel stands to gain the most financially by collecting service fees and customs fees that inevitably accompanies the aid itself. This makes the Canadian flotilla an even more urgent initiative. If successful, it will allow (in addition to raising awareness of the occupation) the Palestinians to fight for some semblance of economic freedom in the shape of exporting their goods to the rest of the world.

Being dependent on aid forever is not compatible with sovereignty. Being under occupation and dependent on international aid is even worse. As the occupying power, Israel's responsibilities are partially blurred by the donations from international aid agencies. Thus, as Hever stated at the Canadian Boat to Gaza fundraising launch, "The Freedom Flotilla initiative has the exact traits that are the opposite of the aid that goes through the official channels of the UN and the World Food Program. ... This is an opportunity to send aid without paying any taxes to Israel, without letting Israel decide what goes in and doesn't go in, and without allowing Israel to control who will be the staff ... many of the aid agencies working in the occupied territories have staff members disqualified by Israel."

The nine Turkish activists (including one Turkish-American) who lost their lives on the Mavi Marmara last May exemplified solidarity and their sacrifice helped to further crack the fortress of Israeli hasbara or propaganda. The Canadian Boat to Gaza initiative hopes to honor the legacy of such efforts. In a time when conventional methods of international aid have proven to be largely ineffective in the face of a brutal and manipulative occupation, the Canadian Boat to Gaza seeks to help Palestinians achieve dignity and independence.

Steven Zhou is a student and activist at the University of Toronto in Canada. He is a contributor to The Canadian Charger, and runs his own blog, (Un)Conventional Analysis at www.worldbfree88.wordpress.com.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

For all the dialogues, discussions, and debates around the Olympia Food Co-op’s recent boycott of Israeli goods, one party’s voice has been shamefully excluded — that of Palestinians.

Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, is one of the most prominent Palestinian-American commentators on the Israel/Palestine conflict. He is coming to Olympia to explain why boycott is an important component for peace and justice for Palestine and Israel.

Help us to advertise the event by printing out our handbill and flyer, and post them/distribute them around town and on the internet!

Ali Abunimah has published articles in the newspapers such as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times, and has appeared as a commentator on CNN, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, NPR, Democracy Now!, and other news programs.

Abunimah was born to a refugee mother from the eradicated Palestinian village of Lifta and a father from Battir in the currently occupied West Bank.

“My parents taught me the importance of standing up for your rights but doing so in a way that is not tribal,” says Abunimah. “The Palestinian issue is about universal rights and about equality for everyone.”

Thursday, August 19, 2010

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre KlochendlerJERUSALEM, Aug 18, 2010 (IPS) - On the eve of the start of Ramadan last week, Israeli police demolished the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the Negev desert. It was the third time within two weeks that the village had been razed.

Unfazed, the Bedouin villagers immediately began rebuilding.

"We have already put back up some 20 of our huts, and we're putting up more every day -- despite the fast," village leader Sheikh Sayyah Abu Drim told IPS when reached by telephone a week after the last police action.

"We have nowhere else to go," said the Sheikh. More than 40 families live in al-Araqib.

At dawn last Tuesday, Israel Land Administration (ILA) officials, accompanied by a large police detail including over 100 border guards and mounted police, began their operation with the support of two bulldozers.

The police removed water tanks and the remains of several dozen makeshift structures that had been erected since the previous demolition only last week. Dozens of families including infants and elderly people were forcibly removed.

In a non-violent protest, a score of Israeli Jewish activists who had slept in the village in solidarity tried unsuccessfully to stay the police action.

"Who will reap all this hatred?" asked Arab Israeli legislator Talab al-Sana, arriving on the site. "The government found a solution for the Jewish settlers who were evacuated from Gaza (as part of Israel's 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Palestinian area). Why not here?" said al-Sana.

After the previous forced eviction, Ilan Jan, an ILA official, said, "It is a test of their spirit. We're doing our job. Now, we'll file a claim against the illegal occupiers for the costs of the evacuation."

Another ILA official, Ortal Tzabar, confirmed that 850 olive trees had been uprooted and would be "replanted elsewhere."

Al-Araqib sits between the Israeli desert town Beersheba and the state-built Bedouin town Rahat. The al-Turi family says its members have lived on the site since the 19th century and that since then they have worked the land and paid taxes, that both Turkish and British documents testify. There is an old cemetery on the site.

"Tearing down an entire village and leaving its inhabitants homeless without exhausting all other options for settling longstanding land claims is outrageous," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Israel police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld maintained the police were simply acting on a court order issued 11 years ago but not executed. Rosenfeld added that that the al-Araqib residents were moved to an area close to Rahat where, he claimed, they had homes.

In 1951, three years after Israel's creation, the al-Araqibs, like many other Bedouin communities, were removed on the grounds that the area would be used for military training.

They were promised that their removal was only temporary and that they could return in six months. They have never been allowed back, but were allowed to graze their flocks. Several families returned to live on their land just over a decade ago.

"We are not invaders, nor squatters," said Sheikh Sayyah. "It is the state that has invaded us."

The repeated demolitions of the village have taken place despite the fact that the ownership issue is the subject of a complex court case before the Beersheba District Court.

Academic experts have already testified in court to support residents' land ownership rights.

An estimated 90,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel, indigenous inhabitants of the desert region of the southern part of the country, live in "unrecognised" villages like al-Araqib. These villages do not appear on official maps though some existed before Israel was established in 1948.

Because the government considers the villages "illegal", they do not enjoy basic services such as water, electricity, sewage treatment, and garbage disposal. As a result they risk being destroyed at any time.

ILA officials contend that they are simply enforcing zoning and building codes, and insist that Bedouin can relocate to seven existing government-built townships townships or to a handful of recently recognised villages.

Coinciding with the time that al-Araqib was razed for the second time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke during a cabinet meeting of the "threat of losing a Jewish majority in the Negev."

Most Beduoin youth serve voluntarily in the Israeli army. Yet, when addressing the issue of loyalty to the state pending a new citizenship law, Netanyahu was quoted as saying, "We are under real attack on this issue (of Israel as a Jewish state). Different elements could demand national rights within Israel, for example in the Negev, if we allow a region not to have a Jewish majority. It has happened in the Balkans, and it is a palpable threat."

One of the villagers, Salim Abu Midyam, expressed anger that the Israeli authorities had undertaken their demolition of al-Araqib on the eve of the Muslim holy month. "We will continue to cling to the land of our forefathers and rebuild our village until our right to live here is recognised."

An ILA official had told reporters on the site, "This is state land, set aside for the grazing of Bedouin flocks, not for houses. The al-Turi clan insists on remaining on the site. We will not capitulate to them. We're trying to show sensitivity, but if we need to demolish on Ramadan, so be it."

Yaakov Manor, a Jewish activist with the Forum for Coexistence in the Negev told IPS he does not believe the police would actually demolish the village during Ramadan for a fourth time.

Sheikh Sayyah was more sceptical: "Three times they brought us presents just before the holy month. You really believe they won't bring us a fourth present during the Holy month itself!"

NEGEV, (PIC)– Clashes erupted between Israeli police backed by special forces and the villagers of Araqib as a heavy fleet of Israeli troops raided the village for the fourth demolition process against the ramshackle.

Israeli police assaulted and arrested a number of residents after they attempted to protect their village from the demolition.

The Israeli Land Authority (ILA) in its third demolition operation in the beginning of Ramadan confiscated the contents of all leveled houses and loaded them on trucks, plowed the streets, and took down the sign bearing the town’s name.

“The [Israeli] occupation’s bulldozers began at 05:00 a lightning campaign and removed all of the tents we live in, and left us in the open without respect for the month of Ramadan,” Sheikh Sayah al-Touri, a Bedouin chief, told reporters.

Regional council chairman, Ibrahim al-Waqeeli denounced the demolition and Israel’s lack of respect for Ramadan. “We do not expect good from the Zionist regime. They knock down and we build,” he said.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The phony intelligence used to induce our March 2003 invasion of Iraq has been dusted off. This time it’s being deployed to take us into Iran.

Same scam. Same storyline. Same fraud—even featuring some of the same players.

Except that this time around their deception lacks the broader context required to gain traction for their phony content. That key difference makes today’s perpetrators far more transparent—for those willing to look.

Those foisting on us this latest fraud also face another challenge: Americans now realize it was Israel and its advocates who fixed that false intelligence around a Zionist agenda.

That realization adds combustibility to the facts now fueling Israel’s fast-fading legitimacy.

Each week brings new insights that undermine generally accepted truths about 911 and our response to that mass murder on U.S. soil. As the costs continue to rise in both blood and treasure, the credibility of those who sold us this “Clash” continues its steady decline.

One key player in this long-running fraud remains unfazed: mainstream media.

In March 2002, Israeli-American Jeffrey Goldberg published in The New Yorker a story alleging an alliance between the jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Iraq. Though an impossible premise, his account made it appear plausible.

His collaborator was James Woolsey, a former Director of the CIA and an avid Zionist. Woolsey assured us that Iraqi intelligence officials met in Prague with Al Qaeda.

Woolsey’s intelligence was “sexed up” to sound credible. Now we know it was false. All of it.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

In the consistency and common source of this duplicity lies the perilous future of Israel and its fast-shrinking legitimacy as a nation state.

The fast-growing worldwide revulsion at all things Israeli suggests that this latest fraud may yet fail—though not for lack of trying.

The Liars Return

Goldberg is back with another round of “reporting” in the best Goebbels tradition. Woolsey helped hype his 2002 New Yorker essay, calling it a “blockbuster.” That it was.

Woolsey, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Richard Perle lobbied the Bush White House in May 2004 to retain Iraqi liar Ahmed Chalabi as the U.S.-favored leader for Iraq. Perle took two decades to develop Chalabi as an Israeli asset—at U.S. taxpayer expense.

New York Times “reporter” Judith Miller featured as facts Chalabi’s fabrications about Iraqi WMD. Meanwhile, Perle took over as chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board in 2001—on which Woolsey and Gingrich served. None dare call this treason—yet.

Goldberg is now making the Evil Doer case for Iran. Writing in the July 22, 2008 issue of The Atlantic, he argues the Israeli case for bombing Iran and urges that the U.S. again join the fray.

Woolsey, Gingrich and Perle are pushing the same agenda from the periphery. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, among Chalabi’s earliest Congressional supporters, are again vocal in their support of expanding the war.

If the U.S. had an honest media, Goldberg would be revealed as a fraud and his cohorts reviled as traitors. Instead he was interviewed on MSNBC by Andrea Mitchell, wife of Alan Greenspan, and lionized by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer who served 17 years with The Jerusalem Post.

The probability of Goldberg conceding that he served in the Israeli army is as likely as Blitzer conceding that he wrote a sympathetic book on Israeli master spy Jonathan Pollard.

Our Faithful Ally

The November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate confirmed with high confidence that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. No credible evidence has been offered that Tehran intends to enrich uranium beyond what is required for fuel and medical applications.

In a step scheduled for August 21, Russia will assist Iran in shifting 64 tons of low-enriched uranium from a storage site to the reactor chamber as the first of three steps in the long-delayed start-up of Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr.

If all goes according to plan, Iran’s reactor will begin generating electricity in three to four months. As a condition of completing and fueling the plant, Russia insists that Iran return spent fuel so that the plutonium cannot be extracted for use in developing atomic weapons.

To date, the Iranians have produced only 5,300 pounds of low-enriched uranium. Moscow sees this next step as essential to bringing Tehran’s nuclear activities under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

What’s the Israeli strategy for IAEA compliance? Bomb Iran. What’s the U.S. strategy? Follow the lead of our faithful and reliable “ally”.

Tel Aviv portrays the Iranian reactor as an “existential threat” and a sure sign of a pending Holocaust. How Likud Party leaders divine that outcome remains obscure. But never mind that minor detail, mainstream American media can fill in the “never again” blanks.

It was during just such a development stage of an Iraqi nuclear facility that Israel attacked and destroyed a nuclear plant at Osirak as it neared completion in June 1981.

Thus the concern that Tel Aviv may attack the Bushehr facility before the reactor rods are lowered into the reactor core. Any attack after the chain reaction begins is certain to release radiation into the atmosphere.

The Perils of Pending Transparency

Other key factors are also driving Israel in this direction, including the need for a diversion.

Tel Aviv is now implicated in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The massive bomb blast left a crater 10 feet deep and 50 feet across. To date, Syria has been blamed for Hariri’s murder, along with Hezbollah.

The ensuing instability was cited by Israel as a rationale for its 2006 invasion of Lebanon with the U.S.—per usual—widely portrayed as guilty by association.

A UN tribunal is now turning the spotlight on Israel’s role. The tribunal will add fuel to the ongoing inquiry into the suspicious death of UK nuclear weapons inspector David Kelly who complained of the “sexed up” intelligence on WMD that induced the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, ridicule is being heaped on the report of the 911 Commission for its glaring omissions, including its failure to identify U.S.-Israeli relations as a key motivation.

Fast-emerging developments on other fronts also spell trouble for Israel.

Even now, no one dares mention the mysterious collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 which was not hit by hijacked airliners. No one dares repeat the comment of leaseholder Leonard Silverstein on a PBS interview when he conceded the building was “pulled.”

Means, Motive & Opportunity

When waging Information Age warfare, false beliefs are routinely deployed as a form of weaponry to displace facts. That displacement process is much easier when the psy-ops includes an emotionally wrenching component.

Thus the necessity that those selling us an agenda wield influence in mainstream media.

With Israeli dominance also reaching deep into official decision-making, those in our military who question today’s Zionist narrative are routinely cashiered out of the service.

So who remains to counter the disinformation that passes for intelligence? In our tattered system of self-governance, who can deploy the facts required to displace the fictions foisted on us by Woolsey & Co.?

Answer: you and those with whom you share these facts and analyses.

The solution to this corruption requires people willing to tell the truth about what is being done to our country—and by whom. Make it personal—because it is. What you see chronicled in these accounts is how organized crime succeeds in plain sight.

In a system of governance dependent on facts for our informed consent, mainstream media was an early target of those perpetrating these ongoing psy-ops. Their success traces to domination of this key industry by supporters of this purported ally.

The facts are clear and the case is now compelling: Israel is not an ally but a reliable enemy.

Goldberg, Woolsey, Perle, Gingrich, McCain, Lieberman, Miller, Mitchell, Blitzer, Chalabi & Co. comprise an army of agents and assets enabled by an industry taken hostage by those destabilizing and delegitimizing the U.S.—from within.

Should the Zionist state again approach us for assistance—of any sort, the response must be clear and unequivocal: never again.

US Announces Second Fake End to Iraq War

It was another of those great TV moments. Embedded reports filming as the “last” brigade of American troops in Iraq cross the border into Kuwait bringing over seven years of unhappy conflict to its final, conclusive end. America was, at last, at peace.

It was perhaps a different sort of scripted, mythical end to the Iraq War than the last one, the May 1, 2003 “Mission Accomplished” speech of President Bush, but it was no more real, as over 50,000 US troops remain on the ground in Iraq tonight.

The “end of the war” may bring some measure of relief to the American people, but it must be something of a sombre moment for those 50,000 troops, as they continue to go into combat operations with the bulk of the American public believing, because their president told them so, that the war is over and combat operations have ended.

Officials have been pretty straightforward about what really happened, not that it has been picked up by the media, which has preferred the more pleasant narrative of a decisive military victory. Instead, the US simply “redefined” the vast majority of its combat troops as “transitional troops,” then removed a brigade that they didn’t relabel, so they could claim that was the “last one.” Even this comes with the assumption that the State Department, and a new army of contractors, will take over for years after the military operations end, assuming they ever do.

And it worked, at least for now. All is right with the world and the war is over, at least so far as anyone could tell from the TV news shows. But as violence continues to rise across Iraq, and July saw the worst violence in over two years, it will likely be difficult for the Obama Administration to keep this war a secret for much longer.

Tunnels will also allow for ease of deployment of police or soldiers during any future raid on the mosque compound

The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Heritage and Endowments has revealed a new Israeli plan that aims to surround Al-Aqsa Mosque with underground tunnels. In a written statement issued on 16th August, the foundation said, "Through this scheme, the occupation authorities seek to establish tunnels connecting Alsharaf Lane, which is called the Jewish Lane, with the Buraq yard and Al-Aqsa Mosque". It pointed out that it unveiled this scheme a year and a half ago.

The association said that news about the tunnels dominated the first page of the Israeli newspaper Maariv on Monday, which is considered by many to mean that the Israeli government has approved the scheme. Not only do the tunnels threaten the foundations of the sacred site, but they will also allow for ease of deployment of police or soldiers during any future raid on the mosque compound, Al-Haram Al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary).

The foundation added that the announcement of the project "coincides with an acknowledgement by the Israeli minister of police of a major exercise conducted by the occupation forces simulating a huge raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque".

A 10-month old baby was injured Monday when he was caught in a turning metal slatted turnstile in an Israeli checkpoint near Bethlehem, where his face was repeatedly slammed into the iron bars until he fainted and fell to the ground.

Bethlehem checkpoint turnstile (photo by activestills)

Witnesses said that 10-month old Mu'min Qasrawi's mother was holding him, and about to cross through the turnstile, when the baby's arm was caught between the metal bars, wresting the baby from her arms and jerking him through the turning metal, where his hand was broken and face and body bashed until he became unconscious.

According to the baby's mother, Shirin Qasrawi, “As I attempted to get the baby out of the carousel, he was crying and his hand was fractured. The soldiers saw the carousel rotating with the baby inside, but they waited until he fainted and fell to the ground”.

The turnstile is located in the middle of Bethlehem checkpoint, which is usually very crowded with Palestinian workers who have permits to work in Jerusalem. The checkpoint was constructed in 2005, and consists of a large building, a door through the Israeli Wall, and several holding pens and metal turnstiles, as well as observation decks, metal detectors, interrogation rooms and multiple ID and permit checking stations.

History may be written by the victors, as Winston Churchill is said to have observed, but the opening up of archives can threaten a nation every bit as much as the unearthing of mass graves.

That danger explains a decision quietly taken last month by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to extend by an additional 20 years the country’s 50-year rule for the release of sensitive documents.

The new 70-year disclosure rule is the government’s response to Israeli journalists who have been seeking through Israel’s courts to gain access to documents that should already be declassified, especially those concerning the 1948 war, which established Israel, and the 1956 Suez crisis.

The state’s chief archivist says many of the documents “are not fit for public viewing” and raise doubts about Israel’s “adherence to international law”, while the government warns that greater transparency will “damage foreign relations”.

Quite what such phrases mean was illustrated by the findings of a recent investigation by an Israeli newspaper. Haaretz revisited the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel seized not only the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, but also a significant corner of Syria known as the Golan Heights, which Israel still refuses to relinquish.

The consensus in Israel is that the country’s right to hold on to the Golan is even stronger than its right to the West Bank. According to polls, an overwhelming majority of Israelis refuse to concede their little bit of annexed Syria, even if doing so would secure peace with Damascus.

This intransigence is not surprising. For decades, Israelis have been taught a grand narrative in which, having repelled an attack by Syrian forces, Israel then magnanimously allowed the civilian population of the Golan to live under its rule. That, say Israelis, is why the inhabitants of four Druze villages are still present there. The rest chose to leave on the instructions of Damascus.

One influential journalist writing at the time even insinuated anti-Semitism on the part of the civilians who departed: “Everyone fled, to the last man, before the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] arrived, out of fear of the ‘savage conqueror’ … Fools, why did they have to flee?”

However, a very different picture emerges from Haaretz’s interviews with the participants. These insiders say that all but 6,000 of the Golan’s 130,000 civilians were either terrorised or physically forced out, some of them long after the fighting finished. An army document reveals a plan to clear the area of the Syrian population, with only the exception of the Golan Druze, so as not to upset relations with the loyal Druze community inside Israel.

The army’s post-war tasks included flushing out thousands of farmers hiding in caves and woods to send them over the new border. Homes were looted before the army set about destroying all traces of 200 villages so that there would be nowhere left for the former inhabitants to return to. The first Jewish settlers sent to till the fields recalled seeing the dispossessed owners watching from afar.

The Haaretz investigation offers an account of methodical and wholesale ethnic cleansing that sits uncomfortably not only with the traditional Israeli story of 1967 but with the Israeli public’s idea that their army is the “most moral in the world”. That may explain why several prominent, though unnamed, Israeli historians admitted to Haaretz that they had learnt of this “alternative narrative” but did nothing to investigate or publicise it.

What is so intriguing about the newspaper’s version of the Golan’s capture is the degree to which it echoes the revised accounts of the 1948 war that have been written by later generations of Israeli historians. Three decades ago – in a more complacent era – Israel made available less sensitive documents from that period.

The new material was explosive enough. It undermined Israel’s traditional narrative of 1948, in which the Palestinians were said to have left voluntarily on the orders of the Arab leaders and in the expectation that the combined Arab armies would snuff out the fledging Jewish state in a bloodbath.

Instead, the documents suggested that heavily armed Jewish forces had expelled and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before the Jewish state had even been declared and a single Arab soldier had entered Palestine.

One document in particular, Plan Dalet, demonstrated the army’s intention to expel the Palestinians from their homeland. Its existence explains the ethnic cleansing of more than 80 per cent of Palestinians in the war, followed by a military campaign to destroy hundreds of villages to ensure the refugees never returned.

Ethnic cleansing is the common theme of both these Israeli conquests. A deeper probe of the archives will almost certainly reveal in greater detail how and why these “cleansing” campaigns were carried out – which is precisely why Mr Netanyahu and others want the archives to remain locked.

But full disclosure of these myth-shattering documents may be the precondition for peace. Certainly, more of these revelations offer the best hope of shocking Israeli public opinion out of its self-righteous opposition to meaningful concessions, either to Syria or the Palestinians.

It is also a necessary first step in challenging Israel’s continuing attempts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, as has occurred in the last few weeks against the Bedouin in both the Jordan Valley and the Negev, where villages are being razed and families forced to leave again.

Genuine peacemakers should be demanding that the doors to the archives be thrown open immediately. The motives of those who wish to keep them locked should be clear to all.

A group of central Ontario parents is demanding their children's schools turn off wireless internet before they head back to school next month, fearing the technology is making the kids sick.

Some parents in the Barrie, Ont., area say their children are showing a host of symptoms, ranging from headaches to dizziness and nausea and even racing heart rates.

They believe the Wi-Fi setup in their kids' elementary schools may be the problem.

The parents complain they can't get the Simcoe County school board or anyone else to take their concerns seriously, even though the children's symptoms all disappear on weekends when they aren't in school.

"Parents are getting together and realizing this is the pattern," said Rodney Palmer of the Simcoe County Safe School Committee.

"We went to the school board and they did nothing."

The symptoms, which also include memory loss, trouble concentrating, skin rashes, hyperactivity, night sweats and insomnia, have been reported in 14 Ontario schools in Barrie, Bradford, Collingwood, Orillia and Wasaga Beach since the board decided to go wireless, Palmer said.

"These kids are getting sick at school but not at home," he said.

"I'm not saying it's because of the Wi-Fi because we don't know yet, but I've pretty much eliminated every other possible source."

The Simcoe County school board could not be reached for comment Friday because their offices were closed.

The parents group has offered to pay for wired connections if the board switches off the Wi-Fi, Palmer said.

"They didn't even say no," he said. "They ignored it and … reaffirmed their position supporting Wi-Fi.

"They are culpable and … they have the gall to go on the record and say they haven't had any doctor's notes. Well what doctor has been schooled about the rate of microwave infections?"

Susan Clarke, a former research consultant to the Harvard School of Public Health, said Wi-Fi technology alters fundamental physiological functioning and can cause neurological and cardiac symptoms.

Young kids most susceptible

"We have statistics that show that children, especially young children, are going to absorb much more radiation than older children and adults because of their thinner skulls and because the size of their brains more closely approximates the size of the wavelength being deployed," Clarke said.

Wireless technology also wastes energy, is less secure than wired connections, could be violating a student's right to a safe environment and should be turned off in schools, Clarke added.

"The simple solution is plug back in the wired, ported system that's already there and unplug the wireless," she said. "It's real easy and it costs nothing. In fact, it will save money."

Professor Magda Havas of Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., who does research on the health effects of electromagnetic radiation, issued an open letter to parents and boards saying she is "increasingly concerned" about Wi-Fi and cellphone use at schools.

Claims by Health Canada that Wi-Fi is safe provided exposures to radiation are below federal guidelines are "outdated and incorrect," based on the growing number of scientific publications reporting adverse health and biological effects, Havas wrote.

"It is irresponsible to introduce Wi-Fi microwave radiation into a school environment where young children and school employees spend hours each day."

The Ontario Ministry of Education said it has heard from the parents in Simcoe County and received a complaint passed along from a Peterborough family worried about Wi-Fi in schools. But the ministry said it is up to local school boards to deal with the issue.

"The boards, the principals and the teachers should work together to address those concerns," said ministry spokeswoman Erin Moroz.

The provincial New Democrats said they too had been hearing from parents worried about the effects of wireless technology on children, and called on the chief medical officer of health to investigate.

"There is enough anecdotal evidence from parents that this is worth looking into."

Palmer plans to find alternate schools or even home school his two children this fall if the board doesn't agree to turn off the Wi-Fi and said other parents will likely follow suit if the symptoms return.

"If they're going to continue to endanger the health of children, I can predict that many of the parents who are now writing us saying their kids have been fine all summer are going to have a change of heart about the third week of September when their kids are coming home from school with these problems, particularly the ones that are passing out and falling down, hitting their head on the gym floor," he said.

While parents worry about younger children, concerns about the health effects of wireless technology prompted Lakehead University to virtually ban Wi-Fi from its campuses in Thunder Bay, Ont., and Orillia, Ont.

"There will be no Wi-Fi connectivity provided in those areas of the university already served by hard wire connectivity until such time as the potential health effects have been scientifically rebutted or there are adequate protective measures that can be taken," says Lakehead's policy on Wi-Fi and cellular antennas.